At 09:40 AM 5/7/04, Andrew Paul wrote:
You dont start wars. Its always a stupid thing to do.
That depends on the viewpoint.
When the psychological trait that motivates people to get into wars evolved a million years ago the choice was sometimes very bleak.
Like: The game has been hunted out, the berry crop failed and there is no direction your tribe can move. War has these outcomes, you win over the next door tribe, kill the men and take the women and resources or you loose and all the men in your tribe get wiped out but the men's female offspring (who have copies of the men's genes) are taken as booty and become mothers of the next generation of the winners.
From a *genes* point of view, war, no matter what the outcome, beats starving.
How about joining in when one is already in progress, whether it has been "declared" or not?
If your tribe gets attacked, it pay your genes to attack back, even to take high risks of being killed while defending your tribe because the alternative--being killed--is worse for your genes..
Evolutionary psychology is really a bleak science.
Keith Henson
PS. We need to map what turns on psychological traits today that were evolved in the stone age. Billions of lives depend on this understanding.
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